Source: Edmunds

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By Jason Kavanagh, Engineering Editor

Cinching down the chin strap of his helmet, Toshio Suezaki's appearance transforms just before his thumb deploys the tidy flush-mounted door catch of the 2009 Nissan GT-R. The factory test driver is innocuous and soft-spoken, but in this moment his eyes harden. It is behind the wheel of this car, still camouflaged to frustrate spy shooters, that Suezaki-san will wield violence incongruous with his bookish manner just minutes later.

One of the primary performance objectives set forth by the Nissan GT-R's development team is to lap the Nürburgring's Nordschleife faster than a 997-based Porsche 911 Turbo. The 2009 Nissan GT-R had circled the famed circuit in 7 minutes and 55 seconds during endurance testing earlier in the year, trailing the 911 Turbo by 15 seconds.

We're here at the Nürburgring with Nissan on an exclusive invitation. Today it'll attempt to beat the 911 Turbo's lap time. It's morning in late September, and patches of roiling gray clouds that ebb and flow threaten to undermine the company's highly coordinated assault on the Green Hell.

A Legacy To Live Up to
More than a performance car, the 2009 Nissan GT-R is an icon, and a Nissan wearing this badge must build upon decades of heritage. This is the first GT-R to be sold in markets outside Japan, a car that has been tasked by CEO Carlos Ghosn to elevate the brand, inspire engineers, yet still be profitable. "The GT-R is forbidden to lose money," Ghosn states emphatically during our dinner in Cologne, Germany.

Racing dawn the following morning, we blast our Nissan Patrol up the autobahn to Nürburg. We step into Nissan's sparkling garage situated just outside the circuit and clap eyes on the GT-R, one of the most anticipated cars in years. A half-dozen technicians mill busily about three prototypes, all of which are silver and still wear black vinyl diapers over the nose and tail.

The car has a brutal, chunky presence that does not come through in photographs. It is certainly not a beautiful car, yet its surface development is complex enough to grab your gaze like a grappling hook. Nissan wouldn't have it any other way. "We didn't want a nice elegant shape. We wanted an original shape," says GT-R Design Director Shiro Nakamura.

Earlier GT-Rs, sold in Japan from 1969 to 2002, were hotted-up versions of workaday Skyline sedans or coupes and were called Skyline GT-R, but the 2008 GT-R represents the first to be built entirely on its own platform. Called Premium Midship in Nissan's vernacular, the GT-R's bare body-in-white is said to weigh less than the 350Z's.

At 183.1 inches in length, the GT-R is a large car. It stretches 7.5 inches longer than a 911, Corvette Z06 or Dodge Viper and its 109.4-inch wheelbase similarly eclipses the others. This large shadow helps to package rear seats that are more sizable than a 911's — but still not really intended for adults to inhabit during long trips — and an 8.3-cubic-foot trunk that can swallow two golf bags.

Anywhere, Anytime, by Anyone
The stated goal is to create a practical performance car whose capabilities can be exploited "anywhere, anytime, by anyone." To this end, the GT-R's greenhouse is as upright as a Marine. And its front seats are said to have more adjustment range than those in any other supercar in an unconfirmed attempt to attract the professional athlete and other full-size customers. Dampers, stability control and gearchange speed all have multiple settings to adjust their level of aggression.

Performance promises to be scintillating. Nissan's internal testing pegs the 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) sprint at 3.5 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 11.7 seconds despite the Japanese-specification model's 3,836-pound curb weight.

Top speed is 310 km/h (193 mph), an accomplishment to which Chief Engineer Kazutoshi Mizuno adds, "Building a 310 km/h car is not a particularly difficult challenge. The challenge is to build a car that is stable and quiet at that speed; a car that is comfortable and easy to drive at that speed."

This overarching do-all philosophy dictated the GT-R's all-wheel-drive system and run-flat tires mounted on 20-inch wheels. Customers will have a choice between Bridgestone Potenza RE070R summer tires and Dunlop all-season rubber.

More Than a Lap Time
Exploring the garage, it's obvious from the numerous spares on hand that setting a fast lap isn't Nissan's only priority among its Nürburgring activities. There are rows of six-piston calipers and 15-inch steel brake rotors lining the workbenches. Tires stacked to the ceiling bear numerous cryptic markings.

This is the development team's seventh visit to the circuit over the GT-R's development cycle, the first three of which were with early prototypes wearing G35 coupe bodies.

"It was pretty damn quick right out of the box," recalls Senior Project Engineer Bruce Robinson. "We would improve by a few seconds on each visit, but [each trip's purpose] was mostly refinement. Quite a bit of the tuning was to nail down the feel of the steering, the feel of the car."

Many testing sessions were spent with an engineer from Bilstein, who accompanied Nissan on trips to Laguna Seca and Infineon Raceway in Northern California, the streets of Los Angeles and Japan's Sendai Highlands Raceway. "It's gotta perform at the 'Ring," Robinson continues, alluding to the headline-grabbing nature of 'Ring lap times, "but it doesn't mean you forget about everything else."

And everywhere Nissan brought the GT-R, the 911 Turbo went, too.

Building the Most Expensive Nissan
As the company's flagship, Nissan is intent on ensuring that the GT-R makes a strong impression on its buyers. A portion of Nissan's Yokohama assembly plant was set aside as an engine assembly "clean room," where 12 assemblers are dedicated to building each GT-R's twin-turbo 3.8-liter V6. This clean room follows the practices of race engine shops, where a single technician is responsible for an entire engine's assembly. Both the engine and six-speed sequential manual gearbox are hand-built.

Deviating from the inline-6 layout of previous GT-Rs, the all-aluminum DOHC V6 is known as VR38 and shares its 60-degree vee angle and bore spacing with Nissan's acclaimed VQ-Series, which is used in everything from the 350Z to several Infiniti SUVs. Few parts are shared between the two engine series.

Each body shell is placed on a vibration rig to verify that its natural frequency, a direct indicator of stiffness, is within specified bounds. Once fully assembled, all GT-Rs are exercised by a factory driver on Nissan's 18-mile Tochigi test track prior to delivery.

A three-year service program is included with the purchase of each GT-R. This program consists of wheel alignments and engine and transmission checkups every year. Only those dealerships willing to invest in this equipment and training required by the factory have a shot at having GT-Rs grace their showrooms. In Japan, 10 percent of Nissan's sales outlets will offer GT-Rs and we expect a similar ratio Stateside.

Running the 'Ring
It turns out our seat time with Suezaki-san piloting the GT-R is scheduled right after lunch. As in minutes after lunch ends. The idea of the GT-R's 473 horsepower and 434 lb-ft of torque tag-teaming the 12.9-mile Nordschleife is enough to turn many would-be passengers green with nausea. I'm regretting my lunch choice of seafood pasta.

As casually as possible, I attempt to communicate this potentially messy situation while twisting the GT-R's ingenious all-in-one seat adjustment ****. In his best English comes Suezaki-san's reply, "Medium-fast, or fast-fast?"

How do you say, "Let's start out fast-fast and if my gastrointestinal tract doesn't cooperate, you'll have to dial it back right quick" across a language barrier?

Suezaki-san tears onto the track and wastes no time bringing the GT-R right to the limit of the tires' adhesion. 'Ring veterans say that it takes 50 laps of the circuit just to memorize the sequence of all 73 turns. Suezaki-san has lapped the circuit several hundred times.

It's manufacturer pool day at the Nürburgring, meaning that the track is currently closed to the public. Traffic is light, but not light enough to make a completely clean lap, and the only other cars we encounter are bandaged-up development mules. I ponder the irony of two top-secret prototypes belonging to competing manufacturers colliding into one another.

We pass all of them, and Suezaki-san gives a friendly wave as he flashes by.

As we reach the end of the main straight leading from Döttinger Höhe, I glance down at the LCD readout temporarily mounted to the passenger side of the dashboard to gain some kind of perspective on the rate at which the scenery is smearing by: 269 km/h, or just over 167 mph. A brush of the brakes and we enter the fast Antoniusbuche left-hander at more than 150 mph as my driver's suit strains against the grippy Alcantara lining the seat surface.

It's over before I expect, and in the end we clocked in at 8 minutes, 13 seconds. Our lap was not intended to be a record attempt, yet nonetheless represents an enviable pace.

The Fastest Lap
The record lap would be set by Nissan's top shoe, Suzuki-san, who ultimately turned in a lap in 7 minutes, 38 seconds on a partially wet circuit. Those ominous clouds looming in the sky earlier in the day left their mark on two areas of the track, Kesselchen and Wehrsiefen, and required Suzuki-san to rein his speed in a bit.

Beating a 911 Turbo around the Nordschleife is an accomplishment at any price, but pipping it by 2 seconds, on a partly damp circuit, at an estimated price point of $80,000 is something else entirely.

Sunset Over Nürburg
The Nissan GT-R will be unveiled on October 25 at the Tokyo auto show, but is already creating waves among the sports car establishment.

Just hours after the record run, one of Nissan's engineers receives a phone call while we pack up our gear. He then clicks his cell phone closed and laughs. The guy on the other end of the line works closely with another manufacturer. He wanted to confirm a rumor he'd just heard: Did it really run a 7:38?

 

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